The epic notability battle between pornstars and scientists
I wonder if it still going on…
Exactly ten years ago, a BIG Wikipedia fan complained about one occurrence of a general issue that is still present, and should always be well known by any user of the great online encyclopedia.
Believe it or not, exactly ten years ago a self-described “BIG Wikipedia fan” complained because pornstars were more notable than scientists on Wikipedia):
“Despite my affection for Wikipedia this week I am annoyed about what’s going on for me on Wikipedia. I [did my best to master] the complexities of contributing articles. At present however my contributions on Wikipedia regarding scientists and projects I know about have all been flagged, either for deletion or for “notability”.
"[Those scientists] are personal friends so YES, I have close connections with the subject. And I believe I can objectively write a good article about them. Just like I wrote about the village I grew up in.. I only spent 12 years of my life there… so have a close connection with that too."
“where I take issue, just for comparison purposes, is that top-notch scientists, in my opinion (and I judge that of many others) can be flagged as not notable, yet pages like those listed below for pornstars can exist without question, without flagging but, I have to assume, are both encyclopedic and notable."
Whatever you think of scientists vs pornstars…
I have NO idea if, in 2021, that situation is still what it was in 2011, and frankly I have no particular interest to check.
The only thing I wanted to share is a humble reminder that the paradox described in that post, if paradox even is the most appropriate word in this case, is a general issue that is basically impossible to avoid in any project with the scopes, procedures and complexity of Wikipedia. The most any of us can do is never forget it exists, and then proceed to use Wikipedia consciously.
And yes, this post ends here, no pornstars to see.
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I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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